


Dreamer

by wallofglass



Category: Holby City
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 06:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16613894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallofglass/pseuds/wallofglass
Summary: John has nightmares.





	Dreamer

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was aupposed to be ten times darker but considering what’s probably happening tonight i thought i would give them a last pocket of happiness....

Light, dark. Light, dark. Light. Wide eyes, thin cries in the gloom, the press of bones, skin stretched tight, all around him. Shaking, shaking, shaking—

“John!”

Someone shaking him awake, wide eyes. Lamplight. John lashed out, still caught in the mesh of dreams, catching the man on his jaw. Henrik reeled back. Henrik. Awake now, John struggled to sit up. Henrik was kneeling on the bed beside him, holding his chin, almost falling off the narrow mattress.

“Henrik-“ more of a breath than a word.

“It’s just a dream, John. You were dreaming again.”

“Dreaming—-“ John looked around, dazed, reached for Henrik and touched his jaw, “did I hurt you?”

Henrik smiled and relaxed, untangling his long legs from underneath and getting up. John felt the sudden drop of the mattress in his stomach.

“I’d rather get a smack waking you up than have to listen to you thrashing around and shouting,” said Henrik, busying himself at the sink. He brought a glass of water over for John and watched him drink it. He was teasing gently, but his voice dropped to a more serious tone, tinged with wistfulness, when he continued.

“I wish you would tell me what you’re dreaming about.”

John shook his head and gulped down his water. The faster he drank, the faster he seemed to get himself together, the sooner Henrik would lie down beside him, manipulated into sharing the bed by John’s calculated mournfulness. They weren’t lovers, but their drunken fumbling and the curious intensity of their interactions stopped them from being just friends too. If Henrik found out, that would all end. He would look at John with pity and see only the damaged parts.

“It’s just a nightmare.”

“A recurring nightmare,” Henrik replied instantly, “you always sound the same when you’re having it.”

John closed his eyes, shuttering himself off from the conversation and the chance of Henrik’s warmth beside him. Usually that would be the end of it but he heard Henrik cross the room, felt him sit down on the bed again. Soft hands took hold of his face, tilting him up to the light, brushing over his fluttering eyelids. When John opened his eyes he was captured by the softness and sadness in Henrik’s eyes.

“Why won’t you let me in?”

John swallowed, the words were pulled out of him, strung along a cord that Henrik tugged on gently until John felt he would unravel under him.

“You would— it’s just old memories. Too old to think about. I do want to. I want to share myself with you. I promise I’ll tell you. When it hurts less. Or when something else hurts more.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Henrik said fiercely. “I won’t let anything else hurt you.”

Henrik leaned further over him, and pulled him into a hug.

“You aren’t alone. You’ll never be alone. Your so strong but that’s not why I love you. Your weaknesses are just as interesting and endearing.”

For a moment John was annoyed that Henrik had managed to read his mind and see his fears for what they were, but then his brain, slower and simpler than Henrik’s as always, registered what had happened.

“You— love me?”

“I—“ Henrik didn’t seem quite aware of what he had said, and he moved away, quelling the gathering warmth in John’s chest.

“I love you too.”

Henrik responded with a kiss, and another kiss, John lying back obligingly under him. 

They still weren’t quite lovers. Henrik moaned low and deep when he came, and John whimpered henrikhenrikhenrik with every twist and tug of his hand, over and over, a rosary prayer. A prayer he would go on saying for the rest of his life, every time it hurt, desperately trying to believe that he wasn’t alone. He prayed to Henrik in flats and hotel rooms and in the cold of his own bed, thirty years later, when he knew he had to tell Henrik what he dreamt about, the dreams more vivid and scarring than ever.


End file.
